The way Enzo went down.
We were lucky. A few seconds slower and we'd all be dead.
This is what my life has become—a series of close calls and narrow escapes.
A constant battle to stay one step ahead of my enemies while everything around me falls apart.
My father died in an explosion, a car bomb planted by a rival faction when I was nineteen.
I found out about it through a phone call while I was in Milan closing a deal.
By the time I got back to Rome, his body was already in the morgue.
I never got to say goodbye or tell him that I’d take care of his legacy.
He raised me to be hard and emotionless.
To survive at any cost.
He taught me that caring about people made you weak and that love was a liability.
That the only things that mattered were power and control.
I believed him.
I lived that way for years and built walls around myself so high, nobody could climb them.
I told myself I didn't need family or connection or anything that resembled weakness
Then Angelica walked back into my life with a daughter I didn't know existed, and those walls started crumbling.
Sofia makes me want to be a better man, one who can find a spot in his heart for the more normal things and not just the violence.
She makes me want to be a father.
A real father who reads bedtime stories and buys Christmas gifts and teaches her about the world.
I'm not in a very personable mood when we get back to the villa.
It's late, everyone should be in bed, but I still see lights on.
Still, I have no choice but to go inside.
I park and walk in.
My clothes are covered in soot and my ears are still ringing from the explosion.
I head toward my den to clean up, but before I reach the hallway, Sofia comes running toward me from the living area.
She's holding something in her hands and her face is lit up with excitement.
"Dante, look what I made," she says.
She crashes into my legs and hugs them tightly.
I look down and see a small clay figure in her hand.
It's roughly shaped like a person with a robe and a staff.
